Month: February 2017

We were at Crawley Irish Festival on Sunday 27th August 2017, telling Irish stories. As usual, we had a lovely responsive audience, and even some help with dramatising the stories – thanks, Alicia!
The biggest hit this year was the story of the Giant’s Causeway.

Broadway Cinema Nottingham showed The Journey, a film about Martin McGuinness & Ian Paisley as political colleagues, from 5 – 18 May 2017.The 1.30pm screening on Thur 18 May was preceded by a brief introduction by Deirdre O’Byrne of Nottingham Irish Studies Group.

Wed 8 March 2017, 7.00 – 8.30pmFive Leaves Bookshop Professor Azrini Wahidin, Irish Republican WomenThis presentation discussed women’s involvement in the Irish Republican Army, political protest and the prison experience in Northern Ireland. Through the voices of female and male combatants, Wahidin demonstrated that women remained marginal in the examination of imprisonment during the Conflict and in the negotiated peace process. However, as the book shows, women performed a number of roles in war and peace that placed constructions of femininity in dissent. Azrini Wahidin is the author ofEx-combatants, Gender and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland: Women, the Prison Experience and Political Protest. She is now Associate Dean at Teesside University.

An International Women’s Day event.

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Wed 15th March 2017 7.00 – 8.30pm
Venue: Five Leaves BookshopPoetry of the Irish in Britain with Cathy Galvin and Deirdre O’ByrneCathy Galvin read her own poetry, primarily from Rough Translation – a collection described by David Constantine as being about “the sea, islands, coastal places, family who lived very differently from how we do now, the loving connection with them”, drawing on Cathy Galvin’s Irish family past.The ‘support act’ was Deirdre O’Byrne reading a selection of Irish-in-Britain poetry, from such writers as Maura Dooley, Ian Duhig, Eavan Boland, Bernard O’Donoghue and Catherine Byron, with commentary. £3 on the door. Venue: Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham